


It's Human Position

by Delwyn (DelwynCole)



Category: The Man Who Fell to Earth
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 22:17:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/34681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DelwynCole/pseuds/Delwyn





	It's Human Position

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Essie](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Essie).



He had never meant to find them. Everything on this planet is fragile, too fragile, ephemeral, and the longer he stayed the more like them he became. Not so much fragile, but invested.

There had been a time when he told Mary Lou that he hated no one, that he couldn't. Indeed, on his planet, hatred was an unheard of emotion. She'd said nothing at the time, but some part of her that knew how to cause pain, as only these humans could, had held onto that. She'd let it sit and simmer until another of his bad days, the ones where he barely acknowledged her presence.

"You can't love. If you can't hate then you can't love either. You don't care enough. You can't." He'd listened, absorbed her words, her anger and felt little in return until she pushed the knife deeper into the shallow wound. "You don't love her either, your wife, your kids. You're not capable of it. If you were, you'd be with them instead of with me." And there's fear in her voice, but he almost misses it in his own wave of anger. He can't remember having felt such anger before. He did love his wife and his children. Everything he did, he did for them.

"Or perhaps I just don't love you." The words once spoken, could not be taken back. It was the first time he realized that he'd changed, that the ephemera of their world had started to convert him. She'd looked as if he'd hit her, something he had never even considered doing. He had hurt her, and some small, very human part of him, had relished her pain. She hadn't spoken to him for a nearly a week after, and when she did again, she'd never asked if he meant it. He still couldn't say whether he had.

He needed Mary Lou. He needed her because for a very long time she was the only person that he actually trusted. Oliver Farnsworth believed in him, and he was the absolute best at the things he did, but Thomas had never been able to trust him completely, in no small part because he could not trust Trevor who had spoken against him almost from the start. Certainly, Dr. Bryce would later be another that he trusted, but for so long there was only Mary Lou. He depended on her as well, depended on her to be there regardless of the mood he found himself in. And there was the sex. It was very different from the sexual act on his own planet, and this borrowed flesh reveled in it. The pleasure was more intense, and there was often pain there as well.

Love is different here. When your life is so short, you must feel things more deeply. So it is that on Earth, Love is an all-consuming thing, a passion like his own people have not known for many generations. Which is how it gives birth to hatred, for truly the two are entwined in ways that even these humans who hold the emotions near to their hearts cannot seem to imagine.

Whether he'd loved that night with Mary Lou, he later did come to know something of human love. It was not quite what they felt for one another, but it was different and more than he had ever felt for one of his own kind. He had loved Mary Lou and Nathan Bryce with a fierceness that he'd never once felt for his wife, or even for his children, which is why it had taken so long for him to ask for her, and why he had never asked for Nathan. That fierceness had slipped into anger, even more present than what he'd felt when Mary Lou had dared to imply that he did not love his family. Anger that started the moment he realized that Bryce knew what was being done to him and did not even attempt to stop it. They were a part of this, whatever it was. They were a part of that which intentionally caused pain and kept him imprisoned. Here too, it was not humanity's ultimately destructive hatred, but still more than he had ever felt for one of his own. He wondered if this is how it had been on his home world once, how it had been when his people still felt enough that they would destroy their own home in the face of their hatred.

He had asked for her only the one time. Neither of them could have borne it for longer. He was losing her, bit by bit, day by day. This species too young to stop the decay of time. She aged, and he remained the same, and what they felt, how they loved had never been enough to hold them together through that.

He had thought of looking for them after he found the door open, but they would be old now, and quite likely inclined to hate him for his youth. Still he had not been entirely surprised to find Bryce sitting across from him. He had intentionally held humanity at bay. He found the thought of losing them hurt, even seeing Bryce, older and frail, hurt, but he'd asked the right questions, had ignored the lie the man had given about Mary Lou.

After, he had watched them, never coming close enough that they might realize, but he'd kept tabs on their lives, pathetic as they were. He had provided well for both of them, and if a bit of extra found its way into their accounts from time to time, it was little enough to explain away.

Thomas had never expected for Mary Lou to die first. She was younger than Bryce, and aside from her drinking had always been in good health, but her liver had given out before his heart. There should have been more people at her funeral, others to celebrate her life and mourn her death. That Bryce stood alone by her grave side is the only reason that at long last, Thomas revealed himself. "I am sorry, old friend." The words were spoken low. Bryce turned to him, and it was almost a shock how his features had changed with age and up close the dry brittleness of his hair and skin were so much more readily apparent.

"Will you ever change?" Bryce asked, voice still strong and curious.

Thomas smiled at him, but even he could tell that it was not a happy expression. "I don't believe I will. This body wasn't meant to age as a humans, and my kind live many more years than yours. I will eventually die, even with this world's plentiful water sources. I pollute my body in much the way that Mary Lou did, and while my kind is much more efficient at filtering out the toxins they might still kill me, but even then I will appear the same."

Bryce nodded once. "She would like that you're here."

"And you?"

"I'm not sure. She would have liked it better if you were here a month ago, or a week ago."

Thomas tilted his head appraisingly, "Perhaps, but I doubt she would have your fascination with my lifespan." Bryce did not reply, and a moment later, Thomas continued, "Do you need anything? Money? I still have that at least."

"No." Bryce says. "You look better than the last time I saw you."

"I'm sober you mean. I still have little hope that I'll ever find my way home."

"I hope you do. There's always a chance, no matter how vanishingly small." Bryce says, laying a hand on Thomas's arm.

A few months later, he was the only attendee at a second, much quieter funeral.

That left him all alone in the world. It was tempting to give up, to accept defeat, but some impulse propelled him back into the studios to record another record that his wife and children might one day hear. There was a girl working part time at the studio, and she was the most vibrantly alive person that Thomas had seen in years. She was innocent as Mary Lou had been and curious as Bryce. She drew Thomas like moth to flame.

It might have been nothing, but when he'd spoken to her, Thomas had learned that she was a student, a scientist interested in the future of space flight. He knew more now, more of what it meant to be human and more of what humans are willing to do to protect their economy. He would do a better job this time, and if he loved her with the same fierceness he had once reserved for Mary Lou and Nathan Bryce, he still did everything for the benefit of his family.


End file.
